You have to keep in mind how public and horrifying the events in August to November 1888 were to the public in London, in Britain, in the Empire, and the rest of the world, and that the hoped for conclusion never (at least officially stated) occurred - no arrest, no trial, no execution.

The leading serial killers of that period from 1886 through 1903 in the world (Prazini, Prado, Cream, Deeming, Holmes, Hoch - stretching to 1906, Vacher, and Chapman) ended with executions. These too would remain memorable in many cases (particularly Holmes with his "castle"), and several of these men would later be considered Ripper possibilities themselves (Cream, Deeming, Holmes, Chapman), but the public could turn off thoughts of them for the most part as they died for their crimes. Similarly one could add Bury, Mrs. Pearcy, and (another serial killer, though of babies) Mrs. Dyer.

There were other unsolved or unsatisfactory cases in this period - Bartlett, Maybrick (no reference to recent arguments about the victim), Borden, the Goebel Assassination Mystery in Kentucky, but these cases remained puzzles as to if the suspect did do it, or if someone else did it (Goebel is the chief example of this).

This allowed the Whitechapel to become a kind of marking for unsolved horrifying crime - and even dwarfing a similar series in the Thames Torso murders.